The book serves as a decent biography of Kubrick but doesn’t detail his life in the one- to two-thousand page range that it would require. Each chapter drags from one film to another at a predictable pace. The basic biographical information with greater precision and tone can be found elsewhere—most being the sources for this. The book reads more like an oral history by quoting others at exhaustive length to do the characterization heavy-lifting. Speaking of which, the authors, most likely intentionally, prefer to keep Kubrick at arm’s length rather than performing the hard work of finding/expressing a more internalized character. It’s also a good example of how two authors cancel out each other’s unique style/specialization rather than unifying to craft a compelling singular vision of a character perpetually residing in film myth. Abrams especially randomly throws in way too many references to Kubrick’s jewishness, which is pedantic and something Kubrick almost never overtly expressed. Would have been much more interesting if they were to comment on Kubrick’s relationship with what it means being American, which finds perpetual renewal in his films and life.